'We're not going to sneak up on anyone': BYU wraps up spring practices with familiar urgency

PROVO — After spring football wraps up this weekend, BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill's life doesn't get any less complicated.

It's the same for his players, who have a meticulous schedule of weight loss or gain, lifting and other exercises, and player-run practices to attend before the Cougars resume formal training by late July in advance of training camp and the 2025 season.

Of course, for Hill, he'll take a few days to "breath" — a run that also corresponds with spring break for his children, whom he hasn't hardly seen since last summer — and then he, BYU head coach Kalani Sitake and offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick will lead exit interviews and the spring recruiting period about a week later.

"July is probably the most mellow month for us to catch our breath and be ready for fall camp," he said.

It's a long offseason, broken up into smaller segments — like spring training camp, summer recruiting and the upcoming transfer portal window in mid-April. But for BYU, it's a chance to build on last season and prove that the 11-2 campaign of 2025 wasn't a fluke.

If there's a sense for urgency for a team that finished in the Associated Press Top 25 and was a game away from the first-ever expanded 12-team playoff, it's BYU.

"We had a good spring, but we haven't done anything yet this season," Roderick told a small group of local media after wrapping up the final practice before Friday's alumni game at LaVell Edwards Stadium. "Last season was nice, but we're not going to sneak up on anybody this season. We're going to have a target on our backs … and we have to be extremely hungry and diligent to prove ourselves again."

Part of the next several months will also involve a significant cut to the roster. Every college football program in the country that opts into the House v. NCAA settlement will need to trim the roster down to 105 players from 120, and BYU is no exception.

The extra homework makes what BYU accomplished during the spring period even more meaningful, especially because the Cougars went into spring with a clear-cut starting quarterback in Jake Retzlaff for the first time in three years.

"We're way farther ahead now in the weight room and our test scores than we were last year," Sitake said. "I think the guys are in a much better place now."

Instead, the spring window was dedicated mostly to BYU's younger and developing players, installing schemes and regimes for early enrolled freshmen like wide receiver Lamason Waller III and returned missionaries Pierson Watson and Cannon DeVries, to name a few.

It also helped sift out the ongoing quarterback depth chart, with a backup race that will be decided between McCae Hillstead and Treyson Bourguet (thought not yet, Roderick noted).

"Both of them are better now than they were last season," Roderick said of the two reserve signal callers. "I think we can win a game with either one of them. I don't know which one that is, yet. They've both had more good days than bad, and I think they're both good players."

As far as the transfer portal goes, Sitake was in line with his coordinators that the Cougars don't have many immediate needs to seek a transfer. Hill said he'd like to develop more depth at defensive tackle — though he has 3-4 players to really like — as well as the inexperience of the cornerback group, though the best way to solve that conundrum is with live game reps.

And truthfully, Hill, who previously coached at Weber State, admits he isn't a fan of "living in the portal" like some schools do in modern college football.

That doesn't mean the coaches won't turn down a prospect that wants to transfer to BYU — if they are the right fit, both for the program and for the culture of the university sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"In the portal, you can find some really good fixes. But that's not the end-all," Hill said. "If you go and take a bunch of seniors and veterans, then you're going to have to do it the next year."

Added Sitake: "We'd be foolish not to look at more talent. But the talent has to match the culture on the team and off the field."

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